In the News (Fri 16 Feb 18)

"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.

Nowhere is slavery in the Bible lambasted as an oppressive and evil institution: Vaughn Roste, United Church of Canada staff.

Sometimes referred to as bonded laborers (because of the debts owed their masters), public perception of modern slavery is often confused with reports of workers in low-wage jobs or inhumane working conditions.

Many of these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon.

Slavery therefore became the ultimate test of disunity within the union of states which were already at odds in a democracy espousing freedom for its people.

Olaudah Equiano's account of slavery brought to the eyes of the world community the use of children taken and used as slaves in a practice which was heretofore thought of as only the world of adults living as captives.

Slavery is the social and legal designation of specific persons as property, for the purpose of providing labor and services for the owner without the right of the slave to refuse, or gain compensation.

The legal designation of slavery is rare, as most societies consider slavery to be illegal, and persons held as in such condition are considered by authorities to be victims of unlawful imprisonment.

This split was triggered by the opposition of northern Baptists to slavery, and in particular by the 1844 statement of the Home Mission Society declaring that a person could not be a missionary and still keep slaves as property.

The economic value of plantationslavery was reinforced in 1793 with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, a device designed to separate cotton fibers from seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds.

The proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal that was implemented as the Union took territory from the Confederacy.

Slavery as a result of debt, however, existed in very early times, and some African peoples have had the custom of putting up wives and children as hostages for an obligation; if the obligation was unfulfilled, the hostages became permanent slaves.

Slavery was an established institution in the Greece of Homers time, and a large portion of the population of the Greek city-states in later days were of the servile class.

Another form of Muslim slavery was in the eunuch guardians of the harems; eunuchs had been widely known in Greek, Roman, and especially Byzantine times, but it was among the Muslims and in East Asia that they were to survive longest.

Be it so; but in all civilizednations unscourged by slavery, a principal object of legislation is to protect every man from cruelty, and to bring every man to punishment, who wantonly tortures or wounds another; whilst slavery plucks off restraint from the ferocious, or leaves them to satiate their rage with impunity.

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, a part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, is dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of knowledge concerning all aspects of chattel slavery and its destruction.

The word 'slavery' is such a powerful vortex of images, meanings, cries, and grief to me. Any technical discussion of any type of forced labor or corvee becomes immediately inflamed when the word 'slavery' is attached to it, and I suspect that many others share this association.

Slavery was the optimal form of dependence, and very often there was no shortage of prisoners captured in war.

She is told to remember her slavery and to not oppress the slave or the alien in the Land.

The problem of child slavery then is not simply a faraway abstraction with no immediate implications for anybody else except those who are directly affected, but rather it is an issue that everybody around the world should be concerned about and demand action to eradicate.

Although most people may not be aware that in the 21st century slavery still exists, reports declare that the number of slaves at present is the highest it has ever been (Free the Slaves).

Aly was fortunate that the authorities were alerted about the slavery that was present at Le Gros' farm, but many other children are not as lucky and are still being subjected to the beatings and overall dehumanization on these cocoa farms.

While a slave ship off the African Coast is shocking at the turn of the 21st century, it represents only a tiny part of the worlds slavery which has seen a rapid escalation since 1945 and a dramatic change in character.

This new slavery is marked by a dramatic shift in the basic economic equation of exploitation 150; slaves are cheaper today than at any other time in human history.

The value of global slavery is estimated at $12.3 billion per year, including a significant amount of international trade in slave-produced goods.

Exposes the fact that slavery remains widespread in Sudan and is not grounded in the current civil war but on old prejudices between the Muslim north and the Christian south.

Permitted and even encouraged by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, the state military has captured countless women and children from the south and sold them into slavery in the north to become concubines, domestic servants, farm laborers, or even soldiers trained to fight against their own people.

Jok emphasizes that the contemporary practice of slavery in Sudan is not the result of two decades of civil war, as conventional wisdom in the media would have one believe.

In the North, slavery was concentrated on Long Island and in southern Rhode Island and New Jersey, where most slaves were engaged in farming and stock raising for the West Indies or were household servants for the urban elite.

Slavery provided the labor force for the Slavery played an indispensable role in the settlement and development of the New World.

Slavery dates to prehistoric times and could be found in ancient Babylon, classical Greece and Rome, China, India, and Africa as well as in the New World.

Slavery had existed as a human institution for centuries, but the slaves were usually captives taken in war or members of the lowest class in a society.

Slavery in other parts of the world had typically involved prisoners of war, and was considered a humane alternative to being put to death.

The institution of slavery got mentioned several times in the ChristianBible: 'Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.' (Leviticus, 25, 44-46).